- I think it's ourmost basic need in life is food and nutrition.

So without that, we really aren't setting children up for their best chance that they would have in life.

(child crying) - [Pamela] Giving a child a chance in life serves as the compass for Navyn Salem, she's on a quest to end malnutrition for children around the globe under the age of five.

And she's doing it here in a plant at Quonset Point's Industrial Complex in North Kingstown.

Around the clock, they manufacture these simple squeeze packets of a fortified peanut butter called Plumpy'Nut.

The nutrient enriched paste doesn't need water or refrigeration and is easy for kids to feed themselves.

It has been proven to take a child from the brink of starvation to salvation in just six to eight weeks.

Salem named her company, Edesia.

Which means?

- Edesia is the Roman goddess of food, and so we thought that she really represented what we wanted to be and what we wanted to create here.

- [Pamela] She's created a social enterprise and what Salem has accomplished since founding Edesia in 2010 is astonishing.

- Running 24/7 allows us to deliver products through UNICEF, the World Food Program, and USAID to 64 different countries.

So far we've been able to reach 22 million children and I always believe we're just getting started.

- [Pamela] Salem got started when her four daughters, now grown, were all little girls.

The idea was born when her father brought her to visit his homeland in Tanzania, where generations of her family settled after leaving India.

She visited a clinic like this one in Chad, and her humanitarian mission took shape as she witnessed heartbreak.

- The first time that I saw a two year old that looked like my newborn at home, I realized that this is an incredibly urgent situation.

That is something that I could never unsee or forget about.

It stayed with me all the time.

- You tackled a world problem as a young mom with babies of your own, how did you find the energy, the willpower, and the time to do it?

- We're all busy and we can make excuses for why we can't do things.

I thought to myself, now's not the best time to start a business, but how can we wait?

How can this issue wait one more day or one more week without doing something to address it?

- [Pamela] Salem has traveled the world seeing the transformation Plumpy'Nut produces firsthand.

- They have to eat one packet in the clinic in order just to prove that they can eat it and they don't have complications.

After they've exited the severe program and they're in the moderate, these children don't look anything like the ones that you just saw in the severe acute malnutrition space.

They are already being interactive, they're laughing, they're playing with you.

- What's the magic in it?

It's fortified, it has nutrients and calories and- - It tastes good.

I mean, even if you're a very hungry child, the food needs to taste good 'cause children, no matter where they are, they can all be picky.

(child vocalizing) - [Pamela] UNICEF says 155 million children under age five are malnourished, and the World Health Organization estimates 45% of deaths in children of the same age are linked to malnutrition.

Salem says the crisis is being fueled by two things, climate change and armed conflict.

- Climate change is causing droughts, years-long droughts and floods that are catastrophic.

They're biblical, right?

Like we've never seen before.

So this is forcing huge amounts of people to migrate.

New conflicts are arising every single week, also forcing migration.

I have seen children take their last breaths.

- [Pamela] But Salem says, while addressing climate change will take time, addressing the politics of hunger at the United Nations Security Council this summer was swift and direct.

Her briefing, how to combat malnutrition.

- We control the conflicts, we right here in this room, just as we decide to wage war, we can decide to end war.

You're literally sitting around a round table with Russia and China and all the powers of the world and your job, their job, our job is, how do we create world peace?

Really trying to get across the humanity of it, that we're not looking at statistics, you know, we're talking about real lives that are affected.

- Yeah, overseeing the entire operations and it's a much more bigger role.

- [Pamela] Andrew Kamara, Vice President of Operations at Edesia was once one of those affected by rebellion.

His family had to flee Sierra Leone during its long civil war.

- My two sisters and I ended up in Guinea, West Africa as refugees, so we had to learn how to survive, how to stay resilient, how to fight to really make it another day.

I think that experience prepared me for the work that I'm doing today, I felt like during my many, many years of living in a refugee setting and seeing suffering, human suffering, hunger and starvation and malnutrition and all kinds of difficulties that folks were going through in that part of the world, it prepared me to stay focused.

Padron?

How you doing, man?

- [Pamela] And Kamara is not the only one working here who has lived that experience.

Edesia's staff of 100 includes workers from 25 countries.

- Many, many of my colleagues have been through the same path as me.

They've lived in refugee camps, they were once hopeless, not knowing where help was gonna come from.

And today, they're in a position of giving back to those same refugee camps.

They take that job very, very seriously, there's no giving up here.

Folks come in, they would start the shift fired up, they will end the shift fired up, no matter how tired they are because they see the result of their work and the impact it's making globally.

There's a life is saved for every time you produce a box.

(machines whirring) - [Pamela] Kamara views each package as a box of hope.

The Plumpy'Nut inside provides meals for two months, enough to rescue a severely malnourished child.

- These could be your children, these are our children, these are the world's children and we all have to be part of the fight to give them a life that is full.

- [Pamela] And Navyn Salem is also concerned about children here at home.

Edesia has developed a plain peanut butter packet.

- There's a need for protein and something that was easily distributed, and ended up distributing it through food banks and school lunch programs across the US.

There's a lot of people in the US who are doing that though, and there's not a lot of people who are supporting and just planning for Yemen and Afghanistan.

- [Pamela] And while her main focus is international, Salem is always seeking ways to expand programs for all children.

She says it's not about treating malnutrition, preventing is the priority.

Currently, Edesia is creating a new Plumpy'Nut for pregnant women.

Meantime, Salem continues navigating everyday challenges to make a world of difference.

- I have some words on my door that say, "Find a way."

Like, we don't have the luxury of saying, "Ugh, this isn't working so well today."

Because, yes, we're gonna get interrupted everywhere on a government level, a policy, a war zone that a truck's trying to get through, pirates in Somalia, you name it, we've had it, right?

But how do you get around that and how do you make sure?

Because every minute counts.

It's pretty powerful to be able to take something that you made and understand that it's traveled halfway around the world to a child whose actual life depends on the fact that you made that box.

- Up next, influencers, social media personalities.